The present invention relates generally to a process for producing prepared foods. More particularly, the present invention relates to a process for preparing refrigerated meals.
Meals that reduce the preparation time prior to consumption are becoming increasingly popular with consumers. While consumers desire the convenience of prepared meals, consumers also desire prepared meals to exhibit taste and appearance characteristics that are similar to homemade meals.
Prepared meals typically contain one or more of the following food components: meat, vegetables, starches, and sauces. For example, consumers expect meat to be tender, vegetables to be crisp, and starches to be firm and flaky and not clumpy.
To maintain the prepared meals with a desired quality until the prepared meals are consumed, prepared meals are typically frozen during the manufacturing process. The prepared meals are then maintained frozen until it is desired to heat the prepared meal for consumption.
Frozen prepared meals are typically thawed and heated using a microwave oven. The frozen prepared meals thereby provide consumers with the ability to quickly prepare meals while minimizing the effort that must be expended to prepare the meals.
In spite of the fact that frozen prepared meals can be stored for extended periods of time without experiencing a decrease in taste and appearance characteristics, frozen prepared meals are typically believed to have inferior taste and appearance characteristics to prepared meals that are distributed and displayed in a refrigerated state.
Various types of pasta and meat prepared meals have been developed to be marketed in a refrigerated state. For example, "fresh" pasta typically exhibits superior taste and appearance characteristics to dried pasta. Similarly, rotisserie-style chicken, which is commonly prepared in a store where the rotisserie-style chicken is sold, has superior taste and appearance characteristics to chicken in frozen prepared meals. Additionally, both "fresh" pasta and rotisserie-style chicken allow consumers to reduce the time needed to prepare the meals when compared to the other listed alternatives.
One common drawback of prior art refrigerated prepared meals is that these prepared meals have a limited shelf life that is considerably less than 90 days. Consumers are reluctant to purchase refrigerated prepared meals where a longer shelf life is obtained through the addition of preservatives to the prepared meals because of potential health risks of consuming large amounts of preservatives over extended time periods.
One way to enhance the shelf life of prepared meals that are distributed and displayed in a refrigerated state is to process the prepared meals to reduce the amount of oxygen within the package. One common way of reducing the oxygen with the package is to purge with an inert gas, such as nitrogen.